


Tessellate

by TenaciousMe



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Depression, Episode: s03e05 A Life in the Day, Episode: s04e05 Escape From the Happy Place, Love Confessions, M/M, Mental Health Issues, SO, Sick Character, Sickfic, This was written before the s04 finale, eff that shiz yo, er...not really canon compliant after Episode: s04e05 Escape From the Happy Place
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-12
Updated: 2019-03-12
Packaged: 2019-11-15 22:06:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18081794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TenaciousMe/pseuds/TenaciousMe
Summary: Everyone's run a bit ragged after this whole Monster business. Quentin catches a cold, and Eliot takes care of him. Some friends visit to raise Quentin's spirits.Back in Fillory, not in the grand halls of Castle Whitespire, but their little cottage (perfect, wasn’t it, even with the all the draughts and the leaky roof?), he had known and loved Quentin, had and held him in sickness and in health, for fifty years. So Eliot knows that Q only snores when he’s coming down with something. That he dislikes tea with honey, but will drink it when Eliot looks at him, eyes wide with just the right amount of reproach. That he will eat the soup Eliot makes him even when he’s too congested to taste anything and has no appetite. That feverish and unwell, he will wake in the middle of the night to read or to sketch a mosaic pattern that came to him in a dream.





	Tessellate

Quentin woke with a start, a crick in his neck needling him into consciousness. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep slumped over the coffee table, like he was still a grad student pulling all nighters. He had the best intentions to brute force his way through another scroll or five of ancient Greek for clues to the Monster’s whereabouts. 

He needed closure, or maybe just revenge. The Brakebills crew had finally banished the Monster, thank the gods, but victory hadn’t come without a cost. Eliot was back, but he was changed. There was a sadness to him now, a haunted look that had never been there before. Quentin would do anything to make it go away.

But somehow, he couldn’t seem to muster the energy for vengeance. The writing on the scrolls blurred in his vision, tripping off a queasy pounding. Quentin remembered closing his eyes - just for a minute, surely! - and now the light streaming through the loft's windows was the color of dying embers. He’d been asleep for hours. 

“Q. You’re awake.” Eliot, entering from the kitchen, offered him a steaming cup. There was that melancholy expression again, passing like a shadow over the not quite symmetrical planes of his face. Quentin had to catch his breath, bracing himself against the inevitable wave of nostalgia, the crushing weight of it settling over his lungs. 

_That’s how El looked when he was young._ No. No, Eliot was still young. A child, really. Only he wasn’t, and neither was Quentin.

“Eliot.” Quentin’s voice was hoarse. He hadn’t spoken to anyone since morning. 

“You were snoring.”

“Sorry.” Quentin rubbed a hand over his face and sighed. “You could have just shaken me. I need coffee. Did you make coffee?”

“Tea.” Eliot handed him the cup, and when Quentin made a face, sat beside him on the couch, cautiously draping an arm over his shoulders. Quentin sighed again and despite himself, despite all the self doubt, the hollowness, the _“that’s not me, and that’s definitely not you, not when we have a choice”_ ringing through his head, allowed his eyes to drift shut as he leaned into Eliot’s touch. It felt so familiar, so comfortable. If only he could stay in this moment forever. 

Quentin cleared his throat past the lump that hadn’t been there a moment ago. “I don’t-”

“You don’t like tea,” Eliot finished. “I know. Fifty years, Q.”

“El-”

“Fifty years,” Eliot continued, placing a hand on Quentin’s temple, caressing gingerly. The headache eased, just a bit, as did the constriction in Quentin’s chest. “I know you only snore when you’re sick.”

Quentin sneezed. 

~

It’s funny, Eliot mused, not for the first time, after he put Quentin to bed - Quentin, sounding more stuffed up by the minute, had fallen asleep almost immediately - how magic can fill a flask or mend a broken bone, but it can’t cure the common cold, and it can’t fix depression. 

Asleep, his strained breathing loud in the quiet of the bedroom, Quentin looked very small and very young. 

Eliot hoped that Quentin’s obvious exhaustion - Q had been dragging and listless for the past couple of days, but who was counting ( _If I ever get out of here, Q_...ok, Eliot was counting) - was just a symptom of a bad cold and not mental illness.

Back in Fillory, not in the grand halls of Castle Whitespire, but their little cottage (perfect, wasn’t it, even with the all the draughts and the leaky roof?), he had known and loved Quentin, had and held him in sickness and in health, for fifty years. So Eliot knows that Q only snores when he’s coming down with something. That he dislikes tea with honey, but will drink it when Eliot looks at him, eyes wide with just the right amount of reproach. That he will eat the soup Eliot makes him even when he’s too congested to taste anything and has no appetite. That feverish and unwell, he will wake in the middle of the night to read or to sketch a mosaic pattern that came to him in a dream.

But there were also days, sometimes weeks, sometimes months, when Quentin was unable to do any of those things. When the crushing weight of depression hobbled his mind and leached the color from from the fairytale landscape. Days when Q couldn’t even get out of bed, and it was all Eliot could do to coax him into taking the tiniest bit of nourishment. “I’m sorry, El,” Quentin would whisper in the moments he felt up to talking, huddled for warmth under their heaviest patchwork quilt even in the heat of summer. “I just can’t.”

It took years for Eliot to get over his anger at himself for failing to cheer Quentin out of these moods. He was a magician in a fantasy world, for Christ’s sake, had ruled as high king, and he couldn’t even make his own lover happy. 

As he got older, verging on middle aged and raising a son - their son! - so innocent and terrifyingly fragile, Eliot realized he was furious with Brakebills as well. Why the fuck did magicians reject the very notion of psychiatry, when magic was borne from pain, pure and simple, and everyone he knew was constantly self-medicating? Who the fuck did Henry Fogg think he was, taking poor, sad Q off his meds when Q was still basically a child? What the hell good was a university for magic when it did nothing, nothing, to prepare you for the horrors of actual life? 

Eliot had never felt so powerless. Quentin’s depressions could descend without any rhyme or reason, like weather. Unlike magic, there were no circumstances you could adjust for, no logic you could master to head them off. They were an immutable force of nature much, much bigger than either of them. So Eliot would curl up next to Quentin in bed, and hold onto him as if their lives depended on it. And just breathe.

“I wish I could help,” he told Quentin so many times, as they lay motionless in the dark. 

And then one day without warning, Q would wake up, and a tiny spark of light would be back in his eyes. In another few days, the mood would lift, go into remission, and eventually Quentin would smile again.

“You do help, El,” he said one day, leaning his head on Eliot’s shoulder as they sat together, scrawling the day’s mosaic pattern in colored chalk. “I can’t always tell you when I’m like that. But I always know you’re there. I couldn’t do this without you.”

At a loss for words, Eliot took Quentin’s hand and kissed it as tenderly as he knew how. Quentin smiled, fondly and little sad, and the beauty of it sent a pang through Eliot’s heart. “Look at you, El. The once and future High King of Fillory, and you’ve got chalk all over your face.” 

A laugh that was almost a sob burst from Eliot’s throat as he blinked away sudden tears, his chest flooded with a feeling that was equal parts brightness and pain. If this is love, it just may kill me, he thought. And then he lived with it for another fifty years. 

~

“Bless you,” said Julia, when she walked in on Quentin’s latest sneezing fit of the day. “You look awful.”

“Thanks, Jules,” he croaked. “You probably shouldn’t get too close.”

“I’ll be fine. Perks of being an ex-goddess,” Julia said wryly. “I can’t be killed, and I can’t get sick, at least not like you. Eliot will be fine too. There’s enough of the Monster’s power still in him. I can feel it. Everyone else is keeping a healthy distance.”

“Great.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Surprisingly ok?” Quentin said thoughtfully. He had vague memories of Eliot pulling the covers over him after he’d kicked them off in the night. Casting a warming spell when Quentin started to shiver, feeding him a slug of brandy that burned his throat and made him cough but afterwards eased him into a fitful sleep. 

“I mean, I can’t stop sneezing, and my head is killing me, but Eliot’s being really nice, which helps.”

“That’s so sweet.” Julia practically glowed with affection as she slung an arm around his shoulders. Or maybe the glowing thing was just something ex-goddesses did?

“I’m happy for you, Q. You deserve this.”

Quentin ducked his head, feigning the need to blow his nose to hide the expression on his face. He sniffled hard, dabbing his eyes with his tissue. 

“Ugh. Sorry. I’m so sick, Jules.”

“Q. You know you don’t have to be so hard on yourself for things you can’t help, right? Because you shouldn’t be.” Julia glanced down, giving him the out. She rummaged around her purse for a moment and produced a bag from a nearby pharmacy. “Anyway, I got you some medicine. DayQuil _and_ NyQuil. And more tissues, which it looks likes you desperately need.”

“My hero,” Quentin said, and sneezed again.

“Bless you,” said Julia.

~

That night, Arielle came to him in a dream. 

He knew she wasn’t real, but there was something so right about her presence in the bed beside him. His joy in seeing her was almost a physical thing, the weight and the heft of it.

“I miss you so much,” he said, embracing her, breathing in her scent. Ripe peaches and gentle rain. It had been so long. 

“I know.” Arielle’s voice was familiar and fond. “I miss you too. But you should know I’m always with you, Quentin.”

In a way, it’s true. Arielle has been dead for almost forty years. Quentin’s life had gone on, years passing as years do, as grief eased into something less palpable, the ache of it fainter and fainter until one day he realized he’d gone weeks without thinking of her face. 

Still, grief and memory were unpredictable. Even years later, he’d be doing something ordinary, drying a dish or entering a room, and think of a joke or an observation about the weather and say to himself, I’ll have to tell Arielle, she’ll understand. Then he’d remember she was gone, and the pain would blindside him once more. 

“It’s not the same,” he said to her now. “I know you’re just a memory, but it’s so good to see you again.”

“It’s good to see you too, Quentin.” Arielle smiled sadly. “I want you to know I had no regrets about our life. But I would have loved to grow old with you and raise our son.”

“He takes after you,” said Quentin, “Thank gods. He’s got a good heart, and such a good head on his shoulders. You know I never had much of a sense for business.”

Arielle laughed. Arielle had been a killer businesswoman. Crops grew successfully in Fillory, what with the magically fertile earth. But to make an actual profit, you really had to work at it, not just offer delicious fruit, but a solid business plan, robust distribution, and an impeccable professional reputation. Arielle used to joke that she was part Dryad. But the reality was much more mundane and so, to Quentin, that much more miraculous. 

“He lived a full, good life, love. As did we. As you will again.”

Quentin sighed. “I just don’t know anymore.”

“Quentin.” Arielle touched his face gently. Her hands were rough from work, but her touch had always been so soft. “Eliot loves you as much as I do. He’ll come around.”

“You think so?”

“I know it. You remember how he used to be: so terrified to feel because the world was so cruel to him for feeling. He’ll come around. He always does. He can be brave when it’s for you. It’ll just take him some time.”

Quentin took a breath. The older, wiser man he had once been and in some way still was felt the truth of it. He had long outlived his wife, that bright young entrepreneur. He had reached an age that his father never would. He had raised a child of his own to be a loving and happy man. And Eliot had seen him through all of it.

“Now get some rest, my love,” said Arielle, laying her head on his chest as she used to, listening to his heartbeat. “You’ll never forget me. I will always be with you, in your heart and in your head. But you have another family too. You need to be there for them.”

~

Eliot sat on the side of the bed, watching Quentin sleep. It was late the next morning, but Q was still snoring, still sick, and Eliot couldn’t bring himself to wake him.

Eliot was worried because in all their time in Fillory, Quentin usually recovered faster than this. But right now he seemed so run down and exhausted from his struggle with the Monster. Eliot took in his pallor, the bruised looking circles under his eyes, and wanted to kill the Monster for doing this to Q. 

Quentin’s breath caught, hitched in his chest, then resumed, strained and labored as he fought his way toward consciousness.

“Hey,” Eliot said softly, placing a hand on Quentin’s forehead.

There was a long moment as Quentin, blinking and disoriented, got his bearings.

“El,” he rasped, shaking off whatever dreams still lingered.

“I’m here, Q.”

“I had a dream about Arielle,” said Quentin in a voice so frayed it hurt Eliot’s heart. “Do you ever think about them, El? Our family from our lives before?” 

“I dream about them sometimes.” This was more true than Eliot cared to admit. “How are you feeling?” he asked, changing the subject.

“Better,” said Quentin.

“No, you don’t. You sound terrible.”

Quentin started to shrug and then, as if to prove Eliot’s point, sneezed violently instead. Eliot handed him a tissue and lay down beside him, watching with concern as Q started to cough and couldn’t stop for an alarmingly long time. When he was finished, Eliot wrapped his arms around him, holding onto Quentin as if their lives depended on it. Quentin sighed and closed his eyes.

“Q, I’ve been thinking.”

“Mm?” Quentin murmured sleepily.

“Maybe you should see a doctor.”

Quentin forced his eyes open and turned to face Eliot on the bed beside him.

“It’s just a cold, El.”

Eliot shook his head. “You lost so much weight while I was gone. You haven’t been eating.”

Quentin scoffed. “I’ve been a little busy.”

“I know.” Eliot smoothed the damp hair from Quentin’s face.

“You just seem so tired lately. And sad. And I know you get depressed. There were so many times in Fillory when you were laid low and all I could do was curse Ember’s name. I told myself if we ever got back to Earth, I’d help you find a decent psychiatrist and get back on your meds. I just want you to be happy, Q, to have all the help you need.”

Quentin sniffled but was otherwise quiet, contemplating. 

“I had a lot of time to think, when I was locked up in my mind. Everything became so clear.” Eliot took a deep breath, then let the rest out in a rush. “Q. You’re the bravest person I know. Brave enough to be honest about how you feel, good or bad. I watched you fight this thing for fifty years, and you never once stopped being brave. And I’ll never forgive myself for making you think you had to be brave on your own, all because I was too afraid to tell you I’m in love with you. I’m trying to learn to be brave. Q, I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you...again. I want you to have anything you need to feel ok. And to be there for you when you’re not.”

“Eliot.” Quentin’s voice was hoarse, but there was an underlying strength to it. There always had been. “I love you too.”

Eliot exhaled, and it felt like he’d been holding his breath forever. He kissed Quentin then, a kiss deep with years of longing, the tenderness of a love that lasted a lifetime. 

“Peaches and plums, motherfucker,” Eliot said softly when they stopped to catch their breath. 

Quentin smiled, a ray of sunlight breaking through the clouds. 

“Peaches and plums.”

~

“Hello, Quentin! You’re looking much better.”

Quentin felt better, physically as well as mentally. His head didn’t feel so packed full of wool, and he could almost breathe freely again. He groaned a bit at the stiffness in his back as he sat up, but it felt good to move.

“Hello, Jane.”

Jane Chatwin beamed at him, then gestured at the night table. “I brought you some biscuits. Ginger snaps. Excellent for the digestion.”

“Thanks,” Quentin took one, sniffed it, and took a cautious bite. When nothing terrible happened, he took another. 

“It’s a shame we can’t do anything to cure the common cold, but these little things can truly help so much. I remember catching a terrible chill as a child when I was in Fillory, but the talking bunnies took such good care of me, it really didn’t feel all that bad. I’m so glad you have someone to take care of you, Quentin.”

Surprised, he looked up to meet her gaze. It was unexpectedly soft.

“You mean Eliot,” he said. 

Jane smiled. “I’m so proud of you, Quentin,” she said. 

“For needing someone to take care of me?” Quentin huffed something that was half laugh, half cough, then grabbed a tissue to swipe at his eyes and nose, which had started to run again. 

“For letting someone take care of you,” Jane said, suddenly serious. She reached out and took his hand in hers. “You needed to take care of each other to solve the mosaic. And you did, you solved it. Together. You took fifty years and experienced the beauty of all life. You banished the Monster through the power of love. Neither one of you could have done that alone.”

“The power of love?” said Quentin. “That seems so trite.”

“It’s the only thing that matters, in the end. Even if it can’t fix everything.” Jane gave him a weighted look, and pulled that famous Watcherwoman watch from her coat pocket. And there it was, enmeshed in the whirring clockwork, winding eternally: the key he had handed her so many years ago. 

“I came back to check on you in Fillory every so often through the years. I made sure you never saw me, of course. Quentin, when I was a girl, I felt...almost entitled to this key. Because I fancied myself a brave hero on a heroic quest. I never appreciated the kindness of the man who gave it to me until I was much, much older. When I learned what it meant to sacrifice for the people you love, to let someone else be the main character of your story.”

Quentin remembers little Jane Chatwin, so young and assured when she appeared at the mosaic, seeking the golden key of time. Jane Chatwin, who would grow up to become the Watcherwoman, the villain of Christopher Plover’s stories. Who was also Eliza, Quentin’s own fairy godmother fantasy, come to life when he needed her the most. Who had died protecting him and would never get the chance to grow old as he had once done. And who was now just Jane. A complicated woman who had become his friend. 

Jane smiled, a bit sadly. “It’s a solitary life, that of a Watcherwoman. To hide in the shadows and never be seen for who I really am. That’s why I so enjoy our chats, Quentin. And I took a great deal of comfort, and pride, over the years, watching you and Eliot doing so well together.” Jane gave his hand a reassuring squeeze. “I’m well acquainted with Quentin Coldwater, all grown up. He’s not so bad. He’s a human being, and a good man. And he’s strong enough and brave enough to let the people he loves take care of him.”

Quentin sniffed, tears pricking his eyes in earnest this time. Jane’s kindness - everyone’s kindness - laid him bare in a way, undid him. It made him feel so raw, apt to cry at the tiniest thing. It was a relief to let it happen.

Jane bent down, took his head in her hands and kissed his forehead.

She looked at him for a long moment, then finally nodded, patting his shoulder as she gathered her belongings to leave.

“Well, now! Off I pop. No rest for the wicked Watcherwoman. Sometimes, I feel like I’ve lived enough for several lifetimes,” Jane said brightly, and Quentin recognized the adult weariness behind her cheerful tone. She was older than she looked, just like him. 

“Thank you, Jane. For everything.” 

Jane smiled, “You’re welcome. And thank _you_ for the key. I really couldn’t have done any of this without you.” And then she vanished. 

Until next time. 

~

Quentin woke the next day and watched the sunrise through their bedroom window, his and Eliot’s. How different the sunrise looked, reflected in the glass and steel of New York City, than it had when it shone on the lush greens and golds of their home in Fillory. 

It was still beautiful. 

Eliot set out an invalid’s breakfast for him: a boiled egg, a slice of hot buttered toast, a cup of medicinally strong tea with honey and lemon. Quentin finished it all, feeling the last of the cobwebs loosen from his head and chest. He was still hungry. 

Eliot smiled to see see Quentin clean his plate, and his smile was brighter than the sun. He left the kitchen for a moment and when he returned, slid a cup of coffee across the table to Quentin, along with a list of seven of the best psychiatrists in New York. Seven felt like a lucky number, and Eliot couldn’t resist the gesture. Or this one: a plate of perfectly ripe peach slices, arranged in a fan of rose and gold on a shockingly white plate. 

Quentin lifted a slice of peach, inhaled its perfume, took a bite. It smelled like heaven, and it tasted like home. 

It was all ahead of them. The beauty of all life.

End.


End file.
